"While the file-sharing ecosystem is currently filled with uncertainty and doubt, researchers at Delft University of Technology continue to work on their decentralized BitTorrent network. Their Tribler client doesn't require torrent sites to find or download content, as it is based on pure peer-to-peer communication. 'The only way to take it down is to take the Internet down,' the lead researcher says." In a way, the efforts by Hollywood and the corrupt US Congress is actually increasing the resiliency of peer-to-peer technology. Karma.

"To be on the safe side the Tribler team is still looking for people who want to act as so called bootstraptribler peers. These users will act as superpeers, who distribute lists of active downloaders."

Granted I don't know the details of Tribler at all, but I can't see a technical reason the bootstrap peers must be any different from ordinary peers. Any peer with a static IP should do just fine for getting peers onto the network.

If there is some special task that these super peers will need to do, then that could lead to security trouble. Ideally peers don't exchange any information about other peers except what's required for connectivity purposes. This opacity would be good for privacy, but not so good for statistical analysis of the network.